The majority of COVID deaths in 2021 were among GOP voters who refused to vaccinate and protect themselves. If you read this blog you know where I stand on that. I am zero sympathy,.
SARS-CoV-2
Joel Wertheimer Has Good News
Joel Wertheimer is an attorney and former Obama official I do not know. I don’t follow him on Twitter. I don’t use Twitter, so I don’t follow anyone on the platform.
Judging him by his optimistic post about COVID deaths last week, it appears that he is one of those polished Obama centrists (with a black and white headshot, even). who feels that people like me, who mask, get vaccinated and avoid indoor public places, are just as bad as those who spread lies about SARS-CoV-2, oppose vaccines, and downplay the pandemic while their peers die. I could be incorrect. But let’s dive into his tweet.
First, a disclaimer: The lack of engagement in his post below is an indication that we’re all done with the pandemic. I acknowledge that. But the pandemic is not done with us. And that is why I feel this urge to point out the ludicrousness of his tweet, which was re-tweeted by the usually outstanding Chris Hayes.
Here is the tweet, since I don’t think Hayes re-tweeted the others:
Objectively, this is good news. I wouldn’t call it great. But it is good. It shows the winter wave of COVID-19 cases is ending. There’s just one small thing. Some states have stopped reporting COVID-19 deaths to the CDC, beginning with Iowa. Now I am not saying that Iowa is hiding hundreds of deaths from the chart above. But the CDC reporting is no longer any good.
I have resisted and resisted this throughout the pandemic, but I now admit that we can no longer think of the US fighting the pandemic as a single nation. The war against the virus started regionally, expanded nationally, but quickly broke-up again into regions, and then states. In the vast American west, big counties show us the COVID flare-ups. Fine. I will stay in my lane going forward, which is New York State.
So let’s have a look at New York State. My state reports weekly deaths to the CDC, but doesn’t post a summary for the public on its COVID dashboard. Instead, that data is available in the DIY open source data section of the site. Now I’m not saying that I don’t have the patience to create my own report. Wait, I am saying that.
So in lieu of new deaths, the only thing we New Yorkers can easily see is daily hospitalizations, which is a great metric. As of yesterday (April 26), New York state had 72 patients in ICUs and under 800 hospitalized with COVID, with the vast majority of those patients in New York City.
And this too, is objectively good news. New York state hasn’t had fewer than 100 patients in the ICU since July 2021. This is a near record low. But it’s accurate and relevant to point out that before the pandemic, if we saw 72 patients in state ICUs with Influenza in April, we would say that this is a harsh flu season.
But this brings me to Wertheimer’s next tweet. And this is what got me fuming:
He’s absolutely correct about one thing. People should not be looking at testing numbers at this point. There’s no blanket testing being done. For example, patients going in for surgery are no longer tested. So we should focus on the hospitalizations. But is it “just getting better”? That’s where I have a problem.
And the simple explanation of the problem I have is this. It’s April. It shouldn't be this bad in April - unless there’s a pandemic going on. There is, right?
So going back to the CDC dashboard, which is incomplete and therefore inaccurate, it reports that last week, the US saw 1160 COVID-19 deaths. In any recent pre-pandemic year this century, that would be regarded as a very high number of deaths from a viral respiratory illness. And that is why we can’t scientifically declare the pandemic over in the US.
Here’s what I often think about. What if we settle where we are currently? What if the US officially loses 1100 people each week, and New York state has between 50 and 80 people in ICUs now through December? Well, we know what would come next. There would be a winter surge of infections, hospitalizations and deaths from January through March 2024. We would see a repeat of late 2022 and the whole of 2023.
My writing this does not mean that I want the pandemic to go on forever. I am not cheering for the virus. And I am not denying that fewer people are dying. I saw what 5,000 ICU patients in New York City looks like a little more than 3 years ago. I know things are better. But what if this is as good as it gets going forward? What if July 2021 and the summer of 2023 are brief brushes with a COVID-free nation? What if the really big drops in deaths only happen in summertime? What if, for only a few weeks each summer, we get close to a definitive end of the pandemic, and then it revs up again?
Before the pandemic, COVID-19 wasn’t a cause of death. We can agree on that, right?
So what exactly is Wertheimer saying in the next tweet?
How can any scientist, doctor, public health professional or policymaker be satisfied with COVID-19 settling to become the third leading cause of death? Let’s suppose, in an alternate history, we were dealing with COVID-19 for decades. It would still present as a big problem each winter when Americans socialize indoors. We would have elected leaders and scientists telling us to get vaccinated each fall to reduce the risk of death. How many Americans recognized that and got a booster last fall? Oh, about 18%, plus or minus. We went from nearly 80% vaccinated in early 2021 to under 20% vaccinated for the winter of 2023. Like a film that sees a huge drop in box office revenue in its second week, the vaccines are no longer desired. And now the US is stuck in this unnecessary vulnerable position with people socializing indoors each winter, assuming they never have to get another shot for this disease. They are done with it. Wertheimer added:
Correct! And I think Wertheimer knows this, but 80,000 respiratory infection deaths per year would, in normal times, be the worst flu season since the 1910s. However, this is the pandemic that we’re done with. We’re over it. Don’t wanna read or hear about it. We’re done. Which brings me to a tweet under his I didn’t want to cite, but now I’m angry:
[In my Martin Scorsese voice] NoNoNoNoNo.
There’s no equivalency between people like me, who advocate masking, avoid dining indoors, and promote booster shots, and the hordes of troublemakers, liars, grifters, domestic terrorists and conspiracy cultists who claim that masks make people sick, vaccines kill people, and COVID deaths are wildly exaggerated.
I think Joel Wertheimer knows that. He didn’t like nor agree with that reply to one of his COVID tweets. But then again, I did start this post with the assumption that Wertheimer is tired of people like me who remind him that we’re still in a pandemic, and maybe it’s not a good idea to drink and dine indoors in bars and restaurants. YOLO and stuff, but this disease sucks. If if you catch it more than once, there’s a really good chance it will ruin your health as you age. It’s an exotic animal disease, people.
In conclusion, what we've been seeing for the last 1152 days or so is a massive struggle over the seriousness of this pandemic. From the start -from the very start- we have not been at war with a virus, but at war with ourselves. (The scientists, of course are at war with viruses, so I am setting them aside for a moment.) The majority knew the disease was scary, deadly and something to be avoided. And the studies and data are proving that pro-science side to be correct. The other side, a loud, occasionally violent minority, has been yelling that the pandemic isn’t so bad, or isn’t real.
But something terrible happened. Over time, the majority stopped defending their position. They began to give-in to the cries, shouts and threats from the minority. They reluctantly re-opened the restaurants and the theaters. Then they gave-in to the demands to stop promoting mask wearing. And then they did the unthinkable. They stopped promoting the vaccines. They just gave-up and made themselves move past the pandemic. And that’s how we saw the current vaccination rate plummet by 60 points. A cultural war with real life and death consequences was fought and the anti-science minority won. Sound familiar? This is precisely how the minority is winning in taking away rights to bodily autonomy and free speech in schools. It is also how the minority got us to stop trying to prevent our environmental catastrophe. They yelled us out of the room.
The pandemic will have long lasting effects on humanity. Just today, the WHO acknowledged that data shows that as many as 10% of people who survived COVID-19 develop long-term chronic conditions, which will almost certainly shorten lifespans, harm economies, and put a lot of strain on the global healthcare and health sciences industry. And this will go on for decades.
But, sure. Yes, Twitter user Loaf Management, we who follow the science are just as bad as those who claimed that the pandemic was being exaggerated, embellished and used to scare the public for whatever reasons the anti-semitic conspiracy cultists could think of.
Republicans Want Us All Dead In The Next Pandemic
And so do Democrats.
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is still active. It has been following a pattern over the last 16 months. In most nations, the waves if infections and deaths have decreased a little with each wave. While the deaths each week in the US have been among the highest in the world, the last three winters show that the pandemic might be a few months or maybe another full northern hemisphere winter away from ending. The US was losing over 20,000 people per week in January 2021, when the vaccine rollout was in its first weeks. That number dropped to 10,000 deaths per week a year later. And it fell further to 4,000 dead per week in 2023.
There is one nagging problem, however. The US has been losing between 2,000 and 4,000 people each week for a year now. Note that last week, the official death count dropped below 2,000 for the first time since July 2021. If this week’s numbers are also below 2,000, then we will have a new official low for US weekly deaths. But back to my point, take a look at the weekly totals over the last 11.5 months:
To me that means two things. First, it means that the vast majority of Americans have stopped masking. Second, the majority of Americans have not gotten a COVID-19 booster. That means their vaccine-induced immunity has worn off.
And it is here where I think I must pause and address these amazing mRNA vaccines. There are millions of Americans who are wasting their lives attacking drugs that are among the safest in world history. They say the vaccines kill people. They don’t. They then say that the vaccines are ineffective. That’s also a lie. The vaccines are designed to be annual, like a flu shot. And if hospitals, offices and public employers simply mandated annual vaccines for both influenza and COVID-19, then we’d be in a much better place as a nation. But too many people complained, and complained loudly. Rather than drive the message home that the vaccines are meant to be given annually, the FDA, CDC and NIAID all backed away from the vaccines in 2022 and didn’t promote them anymore. They were so afraid of confrontation with the far right, that our own government couldn’t be bothered to educate the public about the vaccines that intelligent Americans were practically fighting over less than 2 years prior.
I will say this until I stop breathing: the mRNA vaccines are amazing. They are a technological and pharmaceutical wonder. They work in preventing COVID-related deaths for most people who take them. And like flu shots they help older Americans live longer. The fact that the vaccines don’t prevent transmission is not proof of failure. It’s just that Americans are woefully uneducated at baseline and further misinformed by their news media. Too many people were led to believe that the first versions of the vaccines would be the only shots they would need to protect themselves against SARS-CoV-2. And when scientists try to explain that this is not correct, and try to adjust expectations, Americans quit fighting the virus. It was the fastest and biggest mass quitting I’ve ever seen.
And so, as of March 2023, the US has decided that it is fully done with this SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 thing. For real this time. Who cares is there are still 50 cases per 100,000 people? Furthermore, we don’t know the positivity rate anyway as we stopped testing. As we enter the fourth Spring with the pandemic, the USA is out of the fight. I actually think the US was over this a year ago, around March 2022. I could sense it when the crowds at Knicks games went from being 80% masked to under 10% masked almost overnight in early 2022 as news reports about the Omicron variants died down. Next thing we knew, cruises were sailing again, bars were full, and some fools paid real money to see Top Gun: Maverick in movie theaters by Memorial Day.
Politically, it is clear that the GOP was in denial about the pandemic from the start, and by 2022, virtually all pandemic policies were gone. And that’s not all. To this day, the GOP is furious -FURIOUS!!- about a pandemic it has denied for years. The GOP wants confirmation that the virus was released from a Wuhan laboratory. The GOP wants Dr. Anthony Fauci to spend the last 10 years of his life in solitary confinement. The GOP wants retribution against the New Yorkers and scientists who told the nation that mask wearing was the best way to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2. For a party that wanted to be over the pandemic in the summer of 2020, the GOP sure isn’t acting like they are over it. They might never get over it, so long as their manufactured outrage motivates their voters.
Indeed, one only needs to look at right wing media and Twitter to see this in action. To this day, the Right is raging about lockdowns in 2020, which were never strictly enforced. Every state in the US allowed food and liquor shops to remain open throughout the pandemic. There was a half-assed attempt to stop the spread. Had everyone in the USA stayed inside their houses for 2-4 weeks, we would have stopped the pandemic dead in its tracks. But that is not what happened. Half of this nation disregarded guidance to stay home and mask-up when shopping for necessary items. And now those very same disruptive, loud idiots are still yelling that they were harmed by “lockdowns” that they didn’t participate in. The 2020 Sturgis Rally is a prime example. Around the same time, Godfather Pizza founder and former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain died of COVID-19 after repeated appearances at indoor events. This nation had a massive surge of deaths both just before and just after the rollout of lifesaving vaccines. The right yelled about the virus. Then they yelled about the lockdowns. Then they yelled about the vaccine. Now they are yelling about all those things, in a desperate attempt to rally Republican voters to punish the “libs” who gave a damn about public health and American lives.
But here is the bigger news: those “libs” no longer give a damn themselves. Democrats have gone along with the right wing revolt against public health. They have stopped talking about masks and vaccines. Democrats have declared the pandemic over since 2022 and they will make it official in May. I think it’s fair to say that Democrats are now against public health and against efforts to stop respiratory diseases. When it comes to disease, Democrats are just as bad as the GOP. One only needs to look at the words and deeds of New York City mayor Eric Adams as an example. The vaccines, which only provide protection against serious disease for 5 to 9 months, have been quietly dropped by both corporate and public employers. The backlash against vaccines is so strong, it’s a forgone conclusion that Americans will not line up for shots ever again. At least not in this lifetime. The only people who will get annual shots of any kind will be either educated people who give a damn, or people who work in large hospitals.
In sum, all of this means that we are not going to respond well to the next pandemic. The next pandemic will likely be the result of another SARS/coronavirus. Perhaps next time, many millions will die, not just 3 million. And as I have said before, I don’t care how many die next time. I simply don’t. This is not the opinion of a madman. This is simply the logical response to a nation that has totally gone mad.
My Mask Strategy Is Not Changing
I will have a mask supply for life.
There are a lot of reasons we let this pandemic win. But one of the big reasons is we let a minority of crybabies frame mask wearing as some sort of punishment. Masks have saved lives. Masks are cool. Mask wearing reduces the number of common colds we get. Mask wearing prevents the transmission of influenza and exotic animal diseases like, oh, SARS, a virus family that has now killed millions of people. Masks allow us to go to shops, and go out and live life a little during a pandemic. Most of all, masks work. They were the only tool we had during the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic. They were all we had before we had the mRNA vaccines in late 2020. The fact that people cheered when a judge killed the mask mandates on domestic flights demonstrates how we shifted our thinking in two years. We’re no better than the thugs who stormed the Capitol. We’re part of the decline of this nation.
Study after study shows that wearing a mask cuts the wearer’s infection risk by at least 50%. I think it is greater than that. And a lot of the early air travel studies didn’t take into account that transmission is more likely at the gate and during the boarding process than in the cabin itself (which itself is not as low risk as the industry says - remember how many times you caught a cold after a flight?).
The WHO and Pfizer seem to have a consensus. We are in the second half of a 4-year pandemic. This seems correct to me. We need to get through a winter without a big wave. Pfizer estimates that the pandemic will become an endemic in early 2024. People deny that COVID-19 is a serious disease. People think that this was all a plot by Pfizer to make billions. But I believe Pfizer. They have not yet been proven incorrect on this virus. And COIVD-19 is still an exotic bat disease you do not want to catch.
We New Yorkers Are Fools
Yesterday, Mayor Eric Adams dropped this executive order on the heads of New York City residents. Somehow, it insults both the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. We're all fools. We've been so stupid, for different reasons.
The people who were ignorant, foolish, and reckless are those who refused the COVID-19 vaccine. They now see, a little over a year later, that our leaders carve out exceptions for entertainers and "performers." Any city employee who was involuntarily terminated for refusing vaccines (without a health exemption) now has grounds to file lawsuits.
And then there's the slap in the face to the majority of us, who got vaccines. We waited in long lines. We did our part to take pressure off of hospitals, and give society a chance to smother this raging fire. We trusted the medicine, as these vaccines (aside from J&J) were the most researched and tested vaccines in history. But here we are, a year later, with a mayor who basically just told us that our getting vaccinated to fight the world's first pandemic in 101 years was for nothing. Silly us. COVID-19 is just the flu. Anyone still advocating for vaccines and masking is now a raving crazy person. Since 2021 I have been told by strangers to “seek professional help” because I have been stressing the need for good people to get vaccinated and wear a mask.
The pandemic rages on, but Mayor Adams has declared it over. Throughout the press conference video above, he referred to the pandemic has having occurred in the past. The vaccines that the majority of us worked hard to get as early as possible are now just an option, like the flu shot. The only people who are getting vaccinated going forward are people who want to stay ahead of variants with boosters, children when they reach the minimum vaccination age, or college bound teenagers who realize that flu shots and the COVID-19 vaccine protect their interests to stay healthy.
The ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has killed between 6 and 18 million people, depending on which research methodology you choose. Millions of deaths should have made the vaccines mandatory for decades -generations, even. Instead, millions of deaths only led to the COVID-19 vaccines being mandatory for just under a year. Just under a year of fighting something no one alive has ever seen before, and requires a lot more than a year to defeat. Never mind, say our leaders. Just kidding, you fools! Get back to NBA playoff games and dining indoors. Get back to what’s important.
There will almost certainly be another respiratory disease pandemic in this century. When it hits, there will be PPE, vaccines and anti-virial medications to save lives. But none of it will be mandatory. None of it will be free, either. Theaters will stay open. Airlines will keep flying. Bars and restaurants will carry on. In the next pandemic, it will be every sucker for themselves. And millions of Americans who choose not to limit their exposure will die.
Mayor Adams let his friends in the entertainment industry set public health policy. I'd say "shame," but he has no concept of it.
He Walked The Talk
This is the greatest death of the year.
He died doing what he loved: owning the libs and resisting a proven vaccine
Fuck him. Fuck every eligible adult who refuses to get vaccinated. And fuck every parent who ruses to get their eligible child vaccinated. Fuck them all.
The Virus Won
Democrats gave up fighting SARS-CoV-2. It is just the flu now. We are now being told that we have to live with it. Get back to work, Jack.
The Supreme Court saw the signs. They knew we were going to give up fighting the virus. And as an added bonus, they weakened the regulatory authority of OSHA.
The Spreme Court’s mission, under it’s right wing majority, is to dismantle Federal regulatory agencies. The regulatory state was created by the Democratic Party, with overwhelming popular support. The New Deal and the Second World War made the creation of such a state an obvious necessity. If they and the GOP succeed, as I think they will, the Federal government would fit comfortably within the confines of Calvin Coolidge's policy, circa 1925. He once said that if the U.S. government were to go out of existence, the average citizen would only miss the mail. For this backward Republican majority, the repeal of the twentieth century seems to be the goal. Regulation of capitalism, and the protections of civil liberties, would once again be left to the tender mercies of the states. For the white and rich, this might mean little. For the vast majority of the country, the results will be catastrophic, just as failure to snuff-out the pandemic has been catastrophic.
Uncle Tim contributed to this post.
I Expect You To Die, United States. Please Do.
Mr. Sterling is back from a long, hot summer break. I think I can get my stack of draft posts into production before Christmas. I’ll treat this like a semester at university, as I first did 30 years ago when our popular culture changed for the better.
So I start with this hot take: the Republic is indeed dying. And I have shifted from being sad about it, to being afraid, to now expecting and almost wanting it to happen. We did this to ourselves. And we cannot accidentally or improbably rescue ourselves every time we walk-up to this abyss. This time, we are committing suicide.
When I last posted on this blog, the US had the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the ropes. We were down to fewer than 300 deaths per day. Was it going to be that easy after nearly 18 months of suffering? Were we gong to end this pandemic?
The US had one job. It had to get as many as the 258 Million adults vaccinated before Labor Day. It failed. Full stop. It failed. We didn’t get the vaccine into even 180 Million adult arms as of today. And so now, 1 out of 4 (25%) US adults are unvaccinated. And we are seeing scenes like this in every state, including this example from my own city. The loud minority is winning this war.
The reason the richest country in the world failed to vaccinate its adults before the fall wave of new cases is because lies are far more effective in spreading than truth. That’s been the case for centuries. This vaccination effort was not going to be a smashing success, even with the late mandates now coming into effect. But it absolutely needed a big, clear and coordinated campaign, with Nashville music artists and Ford pickup trucks leading the way. It needed to be the biggest public morale campaign since World War II. Instead, we got mixed messages, starts and stops, and finally the crushing lies all over the internet, reinforcing dumb people and their resistance to authority (well, Democratic authority).
This all makes sense. About 70 Million people, who would be perfectly fine with long-term authoritarian rule, are blowing their tops over hospitals, local governments, and the Federal government asking that they get vaccinated - for free!
We could have at least tried to prevent this with a massive, coordinated propaganda campaign. We didn’t. The lies won. The loudest voices in the room won and we let them. This happened before, just 6 years ago, with well-established vaccines, by the way. And it will happen with future vaccines.
And this translates into a higher death toll. For example:
Too late, loser. You had four months to get vaccinated. You’re dead now. There are over 100,000 Americans like him now. There will be another 100,000. And another.
And you, shithead. You didn’t have to be hospitalized. This was preventable. You should have died. Good thing there were hard-working medical care providers, a spare ICU bed and medications that were available at your local hospital.
I could share hundreds of videos in this post. I’ll stop. If you are still reading this, you get it.
Which brings me to my point. It’s evil, so brace yourself. It’s this: I now celebrate of all this preventable death. We have asked American adults to get vaccinated, and we have given them six months to get it done. But 25% of them have refused. I take that as confirmation that they want to die. They have made their choice. They have chosen death.
So they should die. They should die and stop wasting our time. Our time here is short. The pandemic will soon enter its third year. Let’s step up the death count. 2,000 per day isn’t good enough. Let’s get it back to 4,000. No one will care. And my patience is extinguished. You probably consider yourself too polite to say that. That’s commendable. I couldn’t keep it inside any longer. I had to write these words.
And here’s the kicker. This was the plan of us leftists all along to kill-off the right wingers. We knew -we knew- that by telling people to get vaccinated, the 70 Million hard-core MAGA caps would commit to not getting their shots. It was the most incredible reverse psychology tactic in history, as John Nolte of Breitbart explains:
Could it be…? Could it possibly be that the left has manipulated huge swathes of Trump voters into believing they are owning the left by not taking the life-saving Trump Vaccine?
….
Have you ever thought that maybe the left has us right where they want us?Just stand back for a moment and think about this…
Right now, a countless number of Trump supporters believe they are owning the left by refusing to take a life-saving vaccine — a vaccine, by the way, everyone on the left has taken. Oh, and so has Trump.
Now think about this.
On this very day, about 1,000 people in the U.S. will die of the China Flu. How many of those lives could’ve been saved had they been vaccinated?…. Does it matter?
And if the left is all vaccinated and we’re not, who’s winning?
.…
I could be wrong.Maybe the left isn’t that evil and sly.
But when I think of the unvaccinated lying there dying, being told by their doctor, “Sorry, there’s nothing more we can do to get enough oxygen to your lungs,” I don’t laugh. My heart breaks for that person. Imagine lying there dying thinking that all you had to do was get the Trump Vaccine.
Even if this isn’t the left’s plan, who’s owning who?
That’s right, genius. It is the bank shot to rule all bank shots from the same people who couldn’t pass a deficit-neutral Medicare enrollment option for the uninsured. Sigh.
The pandemic will burn for years. The Republicans have the courts. Gun rights are being expanded in 2022. Roe is being overturned in 2022. The Republicans are going to take back Congress in 2023. And then, in 2025, they will steal the White House and cement authoritarian rule for at least a generation. By the time that happens, the Republic will be dead.
What the GOP has done since 1980 is extraordinary. They have won the presidency twice while losing the popular vote. They have packed the courts with corporate-friendly judges, who have sharply tilted the Supreme Court to the right since the early 1990s (particularly since the arrival of Justice Alito in 2006). And they continue to win big locally, winning close to two thirds of State Houses and state legislators. There are tens of millions more registered Democrats then Republicans. But Republicans are in charge through minority rule. And we are seeing them shift from minority rule to autocratic rule.
Biden's agenda has been stopped. Congress can't anything done. The republic is clearly dying. And Republicans are more than okay with that. They think, unwisely, that the states will be okay if Washington’s power collapses. This is not true. No one is going to be okay when the wildfires and hurricanes hit. Only the millionaires and billionaires will be okay when capitalism reaches its final limits. And there will be no reason to defend this nation any longer when freedoms -particularly bodily autonomy and the right to vote- are taken away. We're all doomed, thanks to Republican ruthlessness and Democratic weakness.
The only question I have remaining is will the masses in cities rise up when the republic collapses, or will we follow the more common historic example and just take it with a whimper? Will New York City just become a symbolic center of resistance like Barcelona under Franco? We Americans are pigs who love our treats. If the treats are still available on Amazon, I think we will just take authoritarianism.
Pathetic.
I’m ready to watch it all go down. Raise your glass and watch it all burn. It’s what the Republicans want.
There Will Be No 'Roaring Twenties'
American mainstream news thinks it is so smart. It knows history! It knows that after the flu pandemic of 1918-1919, the US economy boomed into what we call the Roaring Twenties. If we ignore suppression of freedom in the form of segregation and prohibition, the 1920s were a damn good time! And it had to be triggered by the end of the pandemic, right? And history is going to repeat perfectly, 100 years later, right?
If only it was that simple. Thankfully, plenty of people still understand that economics is adjacent to history as a field of study. Some might argue that they are inseparable. How could you describe the rise or decline of an empire or nation without addressing its economy?
The Roaring Twenties, like any economic boom, was brought about by a variety of factors. We had a continued immigration surge (immigration surges almost always lead to economic growth), widespread electrification, the rise of corporations, the dawn of the modern consumer culture, the rise of the US labor movement, and American culture began to define itself.
A note on the last part: popular culture came of age. The rise of the music recording industry and radio went hand in hand, and great American music genres like blues, bluegrass and jazz were the main beneficiaries. Also, it has to be said that American culture is black. We can give white men some credit for the original American spirits. applejack and bourbon (although black people have been involved with those from the start in one form or another). But blues, bluegrass, jazz, barbecue cuisine, and (later) rock n’ roll, R&B, soul, funk, hip hop and rap are distinctly American and all black. And in the 1920s, only a lucky few black men and women could get a taste -a tiny serving- of prosperity and freedom that came with being an accomplished music artist. Later, some black artists would find more freedom in Paris, especially after the Tulsa race massacre in 1921. Let’s be clear. American culture is driven by black American culture. But black people are not allowed to be prosperous or be free. Still.
On the economic side of things, there really was a sea change. Publicly-traded corporations became powerful in the 1920s. But so did a new labor movement, which led to the standard five-day work week. The 1920s gave us weekends, right before the stock market crash and depression. And incredibly, the depression didn’t take our weekends away. Consumers in the late 19th century would often have to buy goods at a general store, and occasionally order products from a catalog (like a proto-Internet). In the 1920s, consumers still used mail order, but more of what they wanted was immediately available in bigger grocery stores and brightly-lit department stores. The American consumer themes of bigger faster and more had come of age. Automobiles were beginning to be owned by every family. Travelling from coast to coast was now possible in 4-5 days by train. The United States was starting to flex its industrial and technological muscle.
We still have a few intelligent people who know that history won’t be repeated simply because a pandemic is ending. Assuming we are just a few months away from this pandemic bing downgraded to an endemic, there can’t be a long-term surge in prosperity after what we’ve just seen in 2020. There are a few reasons for this.
First, last year was a windfall for the billionaires. The wealth transfer in 2020 alone was shocking, even compared to the overall wealth transfer over the last 40 years. Some individuals just ran away with all the wealth. Kanye West (!) entered the billionaire club. And four of the wealthiest Americans alive saw their net worth grow by a combined $229 Billion. There is no catching up for the rest of humanity. This bigger wealth gap simply sets the stage for stagnant wealth creation for the global middle class, and the greater probability of political and social turmoil over wealth inequality. We can’t have a roaring 2020s if the only ones partying are 5,000 US families with a net worth over $100 Million. That’s a wealth gap on the scale of the Philippines, Russia or Brazil.
Second, there doesn’t appear to be a technological revolution to supercharge wealth creation. Autonomous driving isn’t it. Machine learning (marketed as AI) isn’t it. Billionaires buying tickets to low Earth orbit or the Moon isn’t it. Even the vaccines and biotech, as amazing as they are, aren’t it. Free broadband Internet access for all would be significant. But most municipalities aren’t on-board with that idea. Either that or they’re broke.
Third, did I mention we’re broke? We aren’t rebuilding infrastructure. We’re letting municipal water systems fail and die. We aren’t putting money into the hands of builders. We aren’t making public university free of charge. We aren’t forgiving college debt. We aren’t expanding Medicare for all. We aren’t even trying to house the homeless. And where is our shift to clean, renewable energy? What moon shot do we have in us to kick-start a decade of strong economic growth?
Fourth, American manufacturing will never disappear, but the days of a healthy manufacturing sector are long gone. Manufacturing jobs have been replaced by Amazon warehouse and gig delivery jobs that pay a fraction of what the manufacturing jobs paid. Millions of Americans are working just as hard for less, and half of all Americans are poor. We’re going into to 2020s with the poverty, wealth gap and despair of the Great Depression.
Fifth, after the partial recovery of the travel, live entertainment, hospitality and dining sectors, we will still have a black hole in commercial real estate, as many workers are not returning to office spaces full-time. Working from home is now the norm for many, especially in information technology and information security. Some companies are learning to trust their remote workers to maintain their productivity, and are ending their leases for office space. A lot of commercial office space is going to have to convert to residential apartment space. Oh, and while we’re on the topic of buildings, did anyone notice how many vacant retail spaces there were in cities like New York and San Francisco back when the economy was growing? Brick and mortar retail is dead. All the cash is flowing to Amazon.
In sum, I just don’t see years of strong economic growth ahead. A return to the slow growth seen under Obama and Trump would be welcome. But long term, we are still in late capitalism. And man, does it suck. It’s a dystopian capitalist nightmare, frankly.
Get Off Our Televisions
Dr. Anthony Fauci has caused more harm than good. He needs to go.
In March 2020, millions of Americans were asking if they should wear face masks as a means to help prevent the spread of SARS-CoV-2. I had attended my last, crowded, indoor party on Saturday March 7. On the next day, Sunday March 8, Dr. Fauci was interviewed by 60 Minutes. He was asked if Americans should start wearing masks. He replied, “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Of course, he changed his messaging a month later. But this mistake was enough for me. Fauci could not be trusted. He couldn’t tell the truth to the public. He balked.
For the next year, Fauci danced around Donald Trump, trying to prevent being fired. And why? Why was it so important for Fauci to remain on the job? And how many people had to die due to his mixed messaging as he tiptoed around Trump, trying not to set off the president’s rage?
And now Dr. Fauci is in the middle of a non-stop media campaign, telling Americans that vaccine supplies will be strong by April, and that children as young as six can get the vaccines by September. Both of these claims are not backed by the evidence, the research, or the reality on the ground.
I get it. Dr. Anthony Fauci is window dressing. He’s the cheerleader for defeating the pandemic. He’s public relations. But let’s be clear: he does not deserve to be idolized. He has made too many mistakes. And more important, he never called out Trump’s lies while people died. He’s not a profile in courage. He's a profile in career preservation. He just danced and dodged so he could outlast Trump and finish his career under a president who was competent. But he didn't have to. He could have resigned in protest. But he didn't.
Ship him to sea. Get off our televisions, Doctor.
There Won't Be Much Bounce
People are gullible. People are naïve. People thought that COVID-19 would just go away last summer. Now they are thinking that it will just go away once they are vaccinated. It’s no use trying to educate anyone. Let them believe what they want. But know this: the economy will not simply return to summer 2019 levels at the flip of a switch. That isn’t how macroeconomics works. It will take years -two at the earliest.
On a related topic, our big cities will come back to life. But it will also take years. I’m not really living it up all over Manhattan (although I am making better cocktails at home and plan to resume outdoor dining in March). But I am keeping the city warm until the good times return. Someday.
And while the pandemic will end, the SARS-CoV-2 virus will remain in the human population for centuries. How do I know this? Because I used the Google and learned that what we call seasonal influenza can be traced back to the 1918 flu pandemic. Also H1N1 is a descendant of the 1918 flu. It has been over 120 years. Has influenza gone away? No. Therefore this SARS virus isn’t going away either. How many Americans do we think will die of COVID in 2030? Maybe 20,000? That’s my guess.
So while there won’t be a very strong economic bounce, pandemics continue to bounce like super balls year after year.
The Biggest Mess Left Behind For A New President
I think I’m correct. This is by far the longest list of crises left to a new US president.
For example, Truman was ready to take the helm in April 1945. FDR’s death didn’t rattle the nation in despair and chaos. But 2020? It sure ain’t 1945.
The Trump horror show is ending with rushed Federal executions, a shattered republic, an ongoing withdrawal from Afghanistan, broken confidence in our democracy, and a failed public rollout of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
The vaccine is not reaching Americans in group 1C. I got my vaccine, but my 79 year-old parents haven’t heard shit about their pending vaccinations. What. The. Fuck.
The Biden administration is doomed. It hasn’t begun, but it is set for failure. All because we let an angry, reclusive, sick New Yorker take shits on our Federal government and our nation for nine long, painful years (if you include the long buildup to Trump’s run and nomination, which I do - just look at Trump’s 2011 and 2012 Twitter feeds).
There’s no movement to help Biden fix what Trump has broken. There’s no widespread public desire to heal our wounds and take care of our elderly. We’re just a nation of selfish monsters who are acting like the pandemic is over. It will linger for years, until the next pandemic.
We will never change. We will never learn. And we will never be good. Just like Donald J. Trump.
The Alternate 2020
What could an alternate 2020 looked like? For a while, in January and February, it looked like the US was headed for a real war against Iran (presumably with Saudi Arabia doing some of the fighting). The illegal airstrike that killed General Solem Soleimani could have easily set the Islamic Republic off. It would have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, but the US had committed an act of war on top of Iran’s provokation of having their top general in Iraq. Instead, Iran fired warning shots at US forces (which still caused concussions and ruptured eardrums, which Trump didn’t care about, but that’s another story).
Another alternative 2020 would have been a close, but not unexpected re-election for Donald Trump. After all, we didn’t know at the time, but Trump had been gaining in popularity throughout his residency, particularly with Hispanic and Black men. Against a old, non-confrontational Biden, he probably would have won.
And in yet another alternative 2020, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic still happened, but Trump took it seriously and let a panel of public health experts set a national policy, keeping the death toll under 100,000. His good handling of the pandemic would also result in a re-election victory.
Stay In Your State Until 2022
When will the pandemic end? SARS-CoV-2 will remain with us forever. But the pandemic will one day end. I think it will end in the spring of 2022. We have to assume that the first generation vaccines will only be 40% effective, and that only half of American adults will get them. By the way, thanks Trump and anti-vaccine idiots for turning people against the vaccine. Trump spoiled public opinion by promising it was coming in October 2020, and through his denial of the pandemic overall. He really thinks the media will stop reporting about it next week.
I don't have any travel plans until June 2022. I have nothing booked yet. But I hope to be in Vieques, PR that month. Oh, and I am never going to stop wearing a mask outside my house and car. If nothing else, I will catch fewer colds. I am never going back to a life without face masks. Not after something so traumatic and world changing as this.
2021 will be another year locked in my home state of New York. Thank goodness it is a big, beautiful state. With a car, road trips are possible. I will rent other people’s houses if I want a chance of scenery. I will endure another 18 months.
Let’s see if I’m correct.
The New World Trade Center Is An Even Bigger Failure Now
The plan to build the most architecturally interesting tower is dead. 2 World Trade Center, if it is ever built, will not be the Bjarke Ingels design shown above.
Norman Mailer once said that modern architecture is “collective sightlessness for the species.” He included all of the 20th century greats in his assessment. I wouldn’t go that far. I think a lot of architecture becomes misguided when it attempts to make a statement on our relationships to buildings, landscapes and cites. Maybe if we just designed buildings that were appropriate for their environment and purpose, we’d have generally better architecture. There’s no need to have elaborate themes or statements. Architecture is not filmmaking. Yes, it is art and engineering. But let’s not overthink what it means.
I have architect friends and surly they will disagree with what I wrote above. So let me me make a less controversial and more obvious point: the new World Trade Center (2006-) was a failure the moment it was decided to rebuild the square footage of office space that was lost in 2001. And now, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more of a failure.
New York City will never die. But it is no longer a port town. It is no longer a manufacturing town. It has a thriving real estate industry, tourism, financial services, and still has healthy legal, advertising and marketing sectors. It also attracts film and television productions, but long lost its film production edge to Hollywood and London. Most people in the city are employed by hospitals, restaurants, banks or the city itself, which operates within a social service economy. The city spends what it collects, and when the economy goes south, the city and its people go broke.
The shift to online retail dominance has been ongoing since Amazon launched 25 years ago. The COVID-19 pandemic has instantly changed some corporate HR policies to allow permeant remote work agreements. Again, New York City won’t die. But the corporate real estate landscape in the city has changed and may remain in this state for a generation or more.
We should house the homeless with all the unused square footage we have.
We've Lost Control
We lost control years ago, when we treated Donald J. Trump as a novelty; a form of entertainment. We gave him a television show rather than a New York State jail cell. We treated him as a legitimate president, when in fact he couldn’t hold any regular job and was clearly failing in his elected office. And now we have passed a terrible tipping point into fascism, and there’s probably no coming back.
This is madness. Has a president ever defended an individual charged with murder before?
I was expecting to write a post about how this was the new worst Trump August. And it objectively was. It began with his empty threat to sue Nevada from going forward with mail-in ballots. It continued with his open extortion attempt from Microsoft, should they purchase TikTok (they probably won’t). It continued with his dangerous description of the massive ammonium nitrate explosion, which virtually destroyed Beirut as an intentional “attack.” He said it at least twice. And we’ve already forgotten how he acted while his last surviving brother, Robert Trump, died at Cornell Medical Center. His surviving sisters, Maryanne (age 83) and Elizabeth (age 78) got a preview of how Donald will treat their deaths. Trump waited until a Friday evening to visit his dying brother, some 20-24 hours before he expired, and told the press simply, “He’s having a hard time.” While his brother expired, he played golf. This man is a sociopath.
The middle of August was comparatively calm and normal for a month under Trump - until he incited right wing violence both before and during the RNC, resulting in two men being murdered by a 17 year-old right wing gang member. And the month ended, at long last, with his unhinged presser and a badly edited interview with Laura Ingram, who tried to rescue him several times in an interview that would probably cost any non-elected official his job.
We have lost control. We can’t remove this man from office, even though it would save lives and stop our Republic from bleeding profusely. Removing Trump from office now is a logical action to take. Waiting for an election, watching him narrowly lose, and then waiting for him to leave the White House is not going to work. He will declare victory as the polls close on November 3. He will refuse to accept the results. And he will refuse to leave, which will trigger more violence in our streets.
We should be treating Trump as a clear and present danger, to be removed today. Respecting the democratic process is noble, sure. But this is no time for normality. We have lost control. And we are still losing over 1,000 Americans every day to COVID-19. This period in our history is dire. And it might be the end of this Republic.
All Local Governments Are Broke
Back in 1975, New York City almost went broke. Quite a few people, myself included, thought it did. But actually, New York was able to narrowly avoid a city bankruptcy in a famous 11th hour move that is still studied by urban scholars today.
However now, in 2020, as we reel from the first wave of the global SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, we find that the vast majority of city and state governments across the United States are running out of cash. As I see it, it’s not a matter of if municipalities and states declare bankruptcies, but how soon. Once in a while. Democrats remember this looming crisis. and ask for bailouts. But just like the looming collapse of the US Postal Service, it is quickly forgotten.
The COVID-19 crisis is only beginning. Most of us escaped death in the first round. Nearly 40% of us lost their jobs. Some of us are on the brink of a mental breakdown. Now our governments are running out of cash as a second wave of the pandemic creeps closer.
We’re in a world of hurt, and the pain is going to get worse. And very few outlets are reporting it.
Trump Is Broken
The insanity of this. We know Trump confused Nobel Prize with Pulitzer Prize. Also, we know that the authors of this weekend’s New York Times story are not Pulitzer winners, so he was referring to the organization having won Pulitzers. Also the story mentions Diet Coke and french fries in the Oval Office. It makes no mention of what he eats in the executive residence (although that might be an admission). It was actually a pretty respectful piece. I'm sorry he deleted these tweets. They are a window into the mind of a delusional and very angry old man.
It is well past time to pretend that this president is normal. He is not. He’s unfit for office. He’s mentally ill. How many times has he used the “I was joking” excuse a day after saying or doing something that would make previous presidents take the rest of the week off, or consider resigning?
Enough.
We must all say it: Enough.
The Democratic Party Has Shifted. It's Leadership Is Standing Still.
Just a quick post that the reason Joe Biden is the presumptive DNC nominee is because the party leadership and its network of pundits and consultants have decided to carry Joe Biden over the line. The candidate can’t carry himself. So the party flexed its muscles to shift all significant endorsements to Biden’s column to secure a Super Tuesday victory. The typical Democratic voter hasn’t seen Joe Biden much, so they are voting for the Joe Biden they remember. I really do think that’s what’s happening. If Trump supporters imagine their man being an actual billionaire, who got fantastic deals done, and has the expertise and ability to run our massive Federal government, then Biden’s voters think he is still Obama’s attack dog - the man who pumped iron at his desk in 2015 and was nearly gifted a C7 Corvette Z06 by workers at the Bowling Green plant.
Let’s look at that White House Correspondents Dinner clip because I really do think that there are millions of Americans who think that Joe Biden looks and acts the same today as he did here in the spring of 2014:
This is the Joe Biden in millions of voters’ memories. It is this Joe Biden who is running against the ‘strong man’ Trump that his base worships.
And just today, there is more standing still, as Congressman Jim Clayburn announced that his Select committee into the SARS-CoV-2 will not be investigating the 8 weeks Trump wasted in response to the pandemic. Incredible.
Which brings me to the point of this post. While the Democratic leadership has decided to freeze in-place, a small, growing number of progressive Democrats are reflecting the ideological shift at the voter / constituent level. When asked about the differences between her and Joe Biden, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez said it bluntly. She said that in any parliamentary democracy, she and the six or so other progressive representatives would be in their own party. There’s no way they would be in the same party as Joe Biden.
People are getting mad at her for saying it, which is stupid. The establishment Democrats are mad that she's too liberal and attack her from the left, as Nancy Pelosi has, and then the same Democrats are mad that she says she wouldn't be one of them in a different country. Well, which is it, idiots?
Why Is he Still In Charge?
Since the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree speech, we haven't had a president. We've had an angry man who wants to be the most powerful man in the world, but cannot lead. He wants to pretend to be president, but can't do the hard work of listening to advisers, showing empathy, and taking responsibility.
The press conference on Friday March 20 was the perfect representation of why this man has absolutely no business being president. The country is on the precipice of a tragedy, and our national leader takes umbrage at a reporter's perfectly reasonable question, and goes off an irrational rant. Trump will continue to become more angry and more unhinged as thousands of Americans die.